I WAS A TEENAGE GRASSY KNOLL SNIPER

Those were different days. It was hard to find conspiracy stuff. You had to scrounge used bookstores to find classics like God Drives A Flying Saucer and Proofs Of A Conspiracy, which fueled my paranoia for years. Or you sent away to P.O. boxes to get badly Xeroxed copies of copies of copies.

 In 1996, it's everywhere. Including TV, with The X-Files -- a well-made show, though it veers a tad "primetime soapish" for my tastes at times.

`Course, I can live without this scene:
 
 

Soon-To-Be-Dead Guy: You shot me! A well-aimed flesh wound!

 Mulder: OK. Who sent you to kill me?! Every week, one of you buffoons tries to off me! You work for CSIS, don't you!?

 STBDG: I can't tell you that!

 Mulder: Then I'm going to kill you!

 STBDG: No wait! Let me live and I'll take you to what you are after!

 Mulder [Lowering gun and trying to save time]: Can't you just tell me where it is? I think that would be easier!

 STBDG: No, I have to take you there myself. Union rules!

 [Door is kicked open and more trench coat guys pour in and shoot STBDG dead.]

 Mulder: Stop doing that!

 [CUT to commercial.]
 
 

 eyeNET spoke with Vankin (conspire@webcom.com) while he was in Los Angeles, talking with shady characters about putting together a TV series based on the book. A pilot could go into production in a couple of months. A CD-ROM is also envisioned. But the first multimedia step was a web site -- http://www.webcom.com/~conspire/welcome.html.

 "We knew instinctively that the net audience and ours had a lot of overlap," Vankin says. "The Internet has played a huge role in shaping the `90s as `The Conspiracy Decade.' The essence of conspiracy theory is information overload -- like William Burroughs' famous quote, `Paranoia means having all the facts.' The essence of the Net is also info overload. And the World Wide Web, in particular, provides easy, and often unlikely, connections between things -- making it a natural conduit for Conspiracy Thinking."
 
 

 Vankin never expected to carve out a career as a conspiracy writer. "I was just a writer with lots of ideas for books. The conspiracy ones happened to be the ones a publisher thought were the most commercial -- which perhaps tells you something about our times." Carol will republish the volume as 60 Greatest Conspiracies Of All Time this year.

 Here's an overview of the plots that have changed your life: The CIA conducted LSD experiments on innocent citizens in Canada and the U.S.; the Yanquis tried constantly to kill Castro; Apollo 11 didn't land on the moon, that was a movie set in the Nevada desert; UFOs are constantly crash landing on our planet; Marilyn Monroe was offed because Jack Kennedy blabbed national secrets to her; Jim Morrison ain't dead, he writes Internet culture columns; everyone wants to kill the Pope; Jack the Ripper was heir to the English throne (not so hard to believe); Lyndon LaRouche has proof Prince Charles sold your kid brother crack (not so hard to believe); Charles Manson was really under orders to have those people killed because of a secret plot; "Son of Sam" killer David Berkowitz was part of the same conspiracy; FDR knew ahead of time about the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and just let it happen; the Korean airliner shot down over Soviet military airspace was sent there deliberately by the U.S. -- which later shot down its own Airbus (but they were only Iranians, so that was OK); John Lennon's assassin, Mark Chapman, was programmed by a right-wing, Republican-supporting conspiracy; Ronald Reagan's would-be assassin John Hinckley was also a programmed assassin (curiously, Hinckley's older brother had a dinner date with vice-prez George Bush's son the very same day his brother shot prez Reagan); and last, but by no means least, the Holy Trinity of the Thoroughly Modern Conspiracist, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and the Kennedys.

 Some conspiracies are simply true, no paranoia required. For example, the U.S. government really did hire Nazi war criminals right after the Second World War. Hitler wonderboy Reinhard Gehlen and his ring of spies and "medical experimenters" were "forgiven" and used in spying on the U.S.S.R. This core unit would help form a brand new spy unit called! the Central Intelligence Agency. This fact doesn't seem to make it into most U.S. school books!

 However, most conspiracy theories have some root element of truth -- that's the secret of their success. By using that element of truth as a constant reference point, the conspiracist is then free to lace up the hiking boots and trek off to la-la land.

 A talented conspiracist would note Nazi spylord Gehlen's involvement with the U.S. government, and then create a scenario where he's really part of a much larger international organization called, say, "Odessa," which is actually run by the Ubergrupen Puppetmeister Martin Boorman, Nazi party chief. Boorman, Hitler's right-hand man, never was found after the war. Nor was Hitler. Lay out these facts and it becomes crystal clear: Boorman is alive, controls the governments of the world, and has Hitler's brain pickled in an Uruguayan root cellar, awaiting the Fuhrer's cryogenic resurrection.

 If you can write 10,000 words about this, you are an important member of the alt.conspiracy newsgroup. If you can write 500,000 words, you can be on Geraldo.